Federal Theatre

Federal Theatre (1935-39), branch of the Work Projects Administration designed to provide employment for actors, directors, writers, and scene designers. As well as providing a nationwide audience with inexpensive, high-quality productions, it gave impetus to experimental theaters, such as the Group Theatre, the Mercury Theatre of Orson Welles, the topical "Living Newspaper" (dramatizations of news stories), and the music-dramas of Marc Blitzstein.

Bibliography: See study by J. D. Mathews (1967, repr. 1971).

New Federal Theatre (New York). Named after the African‐American branch of the Federal Theatre Project in the 1930s, this ambitious company dedicated to works by women and minority artists, was founded in 1970 by Woodie King Jr. Working out of the Henry Street Settlement's Arts for Living Center on the lower East Side, the group collaborates with the Public Theatre where many of its productions have moved for greater recognition. Among the New Federal Theatre's notable productions were Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf and David Henry Hwang's The Dance and the Railroad.

Federal Theatre Project, the first theatre scheme in the USA to be officially sponsored and financed by the Government. It was intended to give socially useful employment to members of the theatrical profession who were out of work. Inaugurated in 1935, it was under the control of the Works Progress Administration, and run from Washington by Hallie Flanagan (1890–1969), a theatre historian who was at the time Professor of Drama and Director of Experimental Theatre at Vassar. At its peak the Project had over 10,000 employees, ran theatre groups in 40 different states, and played to audiences, particularly of young people, which totalled millions. It covered a wide range of projects, from Greek to modern drama, musical comedy, children's plays, dance drama, puppet shows, and special programmes for Black, Catholic, and Jewish audiences. From 1936 to 1939 it ran a number of shows on Broadway, and one of its most successful innovations was the Living Newspaper. The socialist content of many of the productions led to criticism, and in the summer of 1939, in spite of a public outcry, the Federal Project was disbanded by the United States Government.